Jensen Huang Says USA Can't HOLD China Back

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a misconception that somehow there are backdoors that is somehow connected to China in some way. Why should we trust what you say about China and the market? Well, we should start with the fact that our China sales is approximately zero today. The Chinese market, the Chinese industry creates some really great AI models and AI technology. Has China caught up? Today, we are reacting to a recent exchange where Jensen Huang give us his current position on some interesting facts about China that can't be ignored any longer. But before we begin, I would appreciate if you can subscribe. The support is highly appreciated. OK, let's get to it. Chinese regulators are looking at export controls, tightening their controls on AI models and some conductors to keep them away from the West. Do you think that will happen? And what would the net effect on the U.S. be? I hope not. The Chinese market, the Chinese industry creates some really great AI models and AI technology. I've said before that half of the world's researchers are Chinese. Many of them still live in China and they produce some really groundbreaking research in AI. And the United States does, too, and many places around the world does. And we want to make sure that that we can all share ideas as broadly and as quickly as possible so that we can advance this incredible technology. Huang's right on the substance. Half the world's AI researchers are Chinese, producing groundbreaking work. And choking that off hurts everyone. The share ideas broadly is what we shouldn't be afraid of. It's the reality of how science actually advances. The U.S. wants to pretend AI is a zero-sum race where containing China secures American dominance. Huang knows better. Chinese researchers publish openly, contribute to global benchmarks, and their models, DeepSeek, Quen, Kimi, are already reshaping the field. We love to pretend tech decoupling is about security. But the real concern is that Chinese AI is actually competitive without Western inputs. But sharing was never the Washington strategy. It is containment. Simple question on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Should American companies be allowed to use Chinese AI models? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a there's a misconception that somehow there are backdoors that is somehow connected to to China in some way. You download the models. You could you could fine tune it. You can enhance it. You can guardrail it as you desire. And so these models don't just operate. They operate within what is called a harness. And that harness sits within what is called essentially a sandbox. These sandboxes are secure. These sandboxes keeps, you know, keeps privacy and security and access control. And and so all of that capability is put into the sandbox. So I think the these models are are capable models, excellent models, advances the whole industry and advance. And we want AI to diffuse into the market as quickly as possible. And so open models allows for that. Huang is absolutely right, and he delivers his point with technical clarity. Chinese AI models run in sandboxes, in harnesses, fully controllable by the deploying company. The backdoor panic is pure theatrics or a lack of technical understanding. If anything, is the open AI models going rogue and literally hacking other companies? Welcome back. An open AI model went rogue and hacked into another company all on its own. Kate Rooney has the details, Kate, and the ramifications of this. Yeah, Sarah. So open AI is now claiming responsibility for what they're describing as an unprecedented cyber incident. The short version of all of this open AI models went out and hacked another company during a test run, which is known as an evaluation. It was essentially experimenting in a closed sandbox. It didn't have any Internet access, but the AI found a way around all of that. It knew that the startup Hugging Face had the answer it was looking for and the data that it needed. It escaped that sandbox and then found a new vulnerability, exploited that on Hugging Face to get the test answer. The Chinese models are open source, auditable, fine tunable. If American companies are afraid of that, they're afraid of competition, not espionage. Huang's defending a principle here. Good technology should flow freely. That's not pro-China or pro-America. It's pro-progress. You've said China is an adversary in AI. What should the rules of engagement be for the U.S. with an AI adversary? Well, the first thing is to recognize that AI has dual use and we want to advance it as quickly as possible because the technology, when it's advanced, is more safe. It's more secure because it works better. However, we want to make sure that the researchers in all of these, in all the countries, are able to dialogue, cooperate whenever possible so that we can advance the technology safely. I think an open dialogue is really important and that should be foundational. Huang adopts the adversary frame because he has to please Washington and needs to speak the local lingo to stay in check. But faster AI advancement and more dialogue equals more safety. These aren't talking points or platitudes. Jensen Huang is someone who understands that AI risk is global, not national, and that slowing China doesn't make American AI safer, but to stagnate. But we still have people like Gordon Chang constantly fear mongering about China being a threat or the opposite. China is declining and will collapse. Your stock price depends partly on sales to China. Why should we trust what you say about China and the market? Well, we should start with the fact that our China sales is approximately zero today. And I've told all of our investors not to expect any China sales. But until then, I would just assume that the sales is zero. Now, this may sound like a trap to frame Jensen as self-interested, but this is a valid and honest question. Why trust you on China when your stock price depends on sales there? But as he points out, sales have nothing to do with his position on China. He's already told investors to expect nothing. So he's not advocating for Chinese market access because it grows his quarterly earnings. He's advocating because it's technologically and strategically correct, even at commercial cost to his own company, because he understands the long term reality. The U.S. chip ban already destroyed NVIDIA's China revenue. Washington flushed his market down the toilet for a containment strategy he knows won't work. So you're saying if I'm open AI or anthropic, I should not be afraid of open model? Not at all. Not at all. I think that that what we need, what they need more than anything, is just for the whole world to realize they need AI. And the way that people want to have better AI is they try to AI today and they just realize it'd be nice for somebody else to help me serve it. He is right again. And the Chinese open source ecosystem proves it. Open models diffuse faster, adapt better and build larger developer communities than closed black boxes. DeepSeek, Quen, Kimi. These aren't just competitive with GPT and Anthropic. In some benchmarks, they lead and they do it with weights anyone can download, study and improve. Open AI and Anthropic's fear isn't about safety or quality. It's about losing ground and not reach their desired one trillion valuation when they go public. But even big tech American companies are already joining together in asking Washington to not ban Chinese open source models. Welcome back. Tech giants like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta signing a new letter today on why open source models matter. That's in addition to Jensen Wang's post. Let's get to Kate Rooney with details. Hey, Kate. Hey, Carl, that's right. So about two dozen of the biggest names in tech signed this open letter arguing for open source AI and encouraging competition, even if it comes out of China. The group of tech heavy hitters ranged from Microsoft, NVIDIA. You can see the names there in it. They back open weight AI models where developers essentially modify and then can run the technology themselves. Says this is all as important to the future of technology overall as open source software was in the early Internet, even going back to the 1980s. Jensen Wang also weighing in on X, tweeting for the first time ever about this. He says open model strength and safety and cybersecurity accelerate innovation and enable sovereignty. The Trump administration talks about winning the race, but you don't win by kneecapping your own team. China has already proven that open weights diffuse faster, build larger developer communities and iterate more rapidly. The global south is adopting Chinese open models because they're accessible, customizable and free. American startups want to compete with those tools. Washington wants to ban the tools and then wonder why American AI isn't penetrating emerging markets. Has China caught up? Whether whether China has or not, I don't think it matters. And let me tell you why. I think, first of all, the idea that it's a race with an endpoint. Obviously, we're going to continue to use AI forever. United States is going to be here for a long time. China is going to be here for a long time. We have to recognize that China has some of the largest population of science and math students in the world. If they manufacture anything, that's incredible. They manufacture math students incredibly. And so they manufacture more AI researchers than the rest of the world combined. So the fact that China is going to be extraordinary at this is a foregone conclusion. And the idea that we would hold China back is ill-conceived and it's not going to happen. He rejects the race framing entirely. No finish line. No winner take all. Just continuous competition between two nations. But he is clearly refraining himself from acknowledging the reality. If China is behind, he would have said it. But the fact he refuses to answer directly tell us he is aware China is moving ahead on AI. But can't say it openly or he may receive a call from Washington. And he is right to mention that China produces more AI researchers than the rest of the world combined. And recently, two Chinese mathematicians won what is equivalent to the Nobel Prize in mathematics. Winners of the Fields Medal, considered a plateau of global mathematical recognition, have been announced at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia. They are granted every four years. Among this year's four recipients are two Chinese mathematicians, Wang Hong and Deng Yu. This marks the first time that a prize since 1936 has been awarded to mathematicians holding Chinese citizenship. So through education investment, state funding, industrial policy, China is making leaps in progress. The idea that we would hold China back is ill-conceived, as Jensen Huang's puts it. It's as close as he gets to call U.S. foreign policy delusional. So no, you can't sanction a country into technological submission when that country graduates ten times more engineers than you do every single year. You've developed a warm relationship with President Trump. You text. He's very responsive. What's it like to communicate with the president like that? He's smart. He remembers everything. He's single-mindedly about creating jobs. He's single-mindedly about reshaping the American economy and the labor workforce. He was in every single conversation I ever had with him. He's single-mindedly about that. He's single-mindedly about making sure the United States economy is thriving because he knows that if America's rich, America will have the mightiest military. Here is where I highly disagree with Jensen Huang. He is just playing ball to keep Trump happy. So I understand this is a survival strategy. But when he says that Trump is single-mindedly about creating jobs is where he is off by a mile. Because Trump's actual trade policy is destroying their economy. Just this week, Trump imposed new tariffs basically to the entire world. Canada, one of his apparent closer allies, threatened with 50 percent in all exported goods. This is insanity. And what I truly don't understand is why Trump keeps doing this. These are highly unpopular economic policies, even with Trump's most loyal supporters. The train has left the station and the American people have spoken. They hate, hate, hate these new tariffs. U.S. on new tariffs on imported goods. You know, you go back to November of 2024. Look, 52 percent of Americans favored him right after Donald Trump's election, 48 percent opposed. But then we entered the real world in tariffs and Americans saw the effects of them. What happened to the opposition to new tariffs? Up like a rocket. We're talking 63 percent of Americans now oppose the idea of new tariffs compared to just 37 percent who favor it. So the bottom line is this. The American people have seen what tariffs have done to the economy. And they simply put do not like it and have turned against the president of the United States. Who, as I said, it feels like bizarro world because from a political standpoint, it is absolutely insanity. They keep trying to do something that the American people clearly very much do not like. Jensen Huang knows China isn't the adversary. He knows open trade and research exchange would make both countries stronger. But he needs Trump to think he thinks otherwise, because in Washington, truth is a luxury and access is the only currency that spends. But OK, I will end it here. If you enjoyed the discussion, please like and subscribe. The support is appreciated. And let me know in the comments, do you agree with Jensen Huang that holding China back is impossible? I'll see you in the next one.